Focus: Kristian Levring is back with Fear Me Not

Ten years on from the peak of the Dogme movement, Kristian Levring is back creating buzz with his latest feature, Fear Me Not. The Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde-inspired psychological drama was one of the stand-out hits at Toronto, where US rights were sold to IFC Films.

Co-written and directed by Levring - whose contribution to the back-to-basics movement was 2000's The King is Alive starring Jennifer Jason Leigh - Fear Me Not is about a man who takes part in a clinical trial for anti-depressant drugs without telling his family and descends into an increasingly dark place.

'I'm very preoccupied with people having the wrong image of themselves,' says Levring of the film. 'Michael is a bloke who never really clears out the storage room of his mind. He displays signs of repression and when we meet him he is on the verge of a breakdown.'

Levring's fourth theatrical feature (he previously had a successful 15-year career making commercials), Fear Me Not is co-written by Anders Thomas Jensen, with whom he collaborated on The King is Alive. It stars two of Europe's leading actors, Ulrich Thomsen and Paprika Steen.

The choice of Thomsen for the main part of Michael was an easy one: 'He is the kind of actor who looks like he carries a secret. Audiences want to follow him on the journey he makes as this character.'

The film is produced by the renowned Sisse Graum Jorgensen through Europa and international sales are being handled by TrustNordisk. Nordisk Film is releasing Fear Me Not in January.

Levring has been building a stack of ready-to-shoot scripts with Jensen. And in December he will be reunited with his fellow Dogme95 brothers Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen to receive the outstanding European achievement in world cinema prize at the European Film Awards in Copenhagen.

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